Assuring the Empire of the Future: The 1798 Fete de la Liberte

Assuring the Empire of the Future: The 1798 Fête de la Liberté
Author(s): Patricia Mainardi
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 48, No. 2, Images of Rule: Issues of Interpretation (Summer, 1989),
pp. 155-163
Published by: College Art Association
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Assuring the Empire of the Future:
The 1798 Fete de la Liberte
By Patricia Mainardi
hen the procession of the Fete de
la Liberte bearing Napoleon's art
loot from Italy crossed Paris on a rainy
day in July 1798, its passage was accom-
panied by a song whose refrain went
"Rome is no more in Rome. It is now in
Paris"' (Fig. 1). But Rome in fact was
two cities, cultural Rome and political
Rome. Cultural Rome was the Mecca
for young French artists and the home-
away-from-home of the French Acade-
my; it was the destination of young
gentlemen on their grand tour and the
location of the most esteemed works of
art in the Western world-namely, the
sculpture of antiquity. But there was a
political Rome as well, the historical
Rome of Empire, of marching armies
and world conquest. Which of these two
Romes did the festival honor, and which
was now in Paris?
Art historians have looked at classical
art aesthetically and indeed have writ-
ten about this festival as a celebration of
"taste and the antique."2 Historians, on
the other hand, have viewed it politically
and have regarded the art primarily as
war trophies.3 Both views are correct,
for the art did embody a double authori-
ty, both cultural and political; through
the agency of these objects both Romes
were symbolically relocated in Paris. It
is my theory that the Fete celebrated
this alliance between politics and
antique art and that it symbolically
marked the transfer of the cultural capi-
tal of Europe from eighteenth-century
Rome to nineteenth-century Paris. His-
torians, while accepting that such a cul-
tural relocation took place, have been
silent on the reasons; I am proposing
that we look for an explanation in the
expressed French intention of affecting
this transfer through the looting carried
out by the Revolutionary armies
throughout Europe and the subsequent
display of the plunder in the Louvre. We
have in recent history witnessed a simi-
lar attempt by Hitler, whose plans for a
grand cultural capital in Linz, his home-
town in Austria, featured a museum
stocked with all the looted art treasures
of Europe.4 For Hitler, as for Napoleon
before him, possession of the world's art
treasures would legitimize his regime
and constitute the outward sign of
Empire.
Although looting had been a standard
part of military conquest from time
immemorial, it was brought to a new
level of sophistication during the Revo-
lutionary period. French looting of for-
eign, as well as domestic, art treasures
preceded Bonaparte's rise to power;
practiced as a kind of free enterprise by
the military, it had accompanied the
first French campaign in Belgium in
1793.5 In 1794, however, the Committee
of Public Instruction decreed that "its
President will write to the Committee of
Public Safety on the importance of
secretly sending artists and scholars in
the wake of our armies; in regions
secured by Republican troops they will
appropriate, with precaution, monu-
ments of interest to the arts and sciences
and have them sent to France."6 This
was soon done, and a steady stream of
Rubenses and Van Dykes began arriv-
ing in Paris.7 Despite some new rhetoric
about such works being "liberated" not
stolen, the legality of this procedure
depended on the right of conquest alone.
Had the Belgians been able to defeat
France, they, according to military pre-
cedent, would then have had the right to
recuperate their stolen treasures; this
Fig. 1 Fete de la Liberte, 9-10 Thermidor VI, Champ-de-Mars, Paris.
Summer 1989 155

was the common law of warfare. French
intentions of concealing the govern-
ment-sponsored looting give ample evi-
dence of misgivings over the appropri-
ateness of this behavior in the Age of
Enlightenment for, by the eighteenth
century, looting was no longer consid-
ered a natural right of warfare.
General Bonaparte refined this com-
mon law in accordance with the general
shift through the eighteenth century to
contract law.8 As his victorious armies
passed through Italy, he insisted on con-
tract-treaties with the vanquished, be
they Pope or Duke, specifying the ces-
sion of works of art. This innovation in
diplomatic procedure placed Bona-
parte's art loot in the peculiar legalistic
position in which it remains, for when
the allies, victors in turn, attempted to
reclaim their art in 1814-15, the French
held up their treaties as legal "proof" of
perpetual ownership, a claim still main-
tained.9 In his first official speech in
1814, the restored monarch Louis
XVIII announced of the plunder of
Europe, "the masterpieces of the arts
belong to us forevermore, by rights more
stable and sacred than those of con-
quest." Only the new concept of the
precedence of contract law over com-
mon law could make such a claim.10
Bonaparte's 1796 Treaty of Bologna
with Pope Pius VI epitomized these new
methods; reinforced by the 1797 Treaty
of Tolentino, it specified "The Pope will
deliver to the French Republic one
hundred pictures, busts, vases, or statues
at the choice of the commissioners who
will be sent to Rome, among which
objects will specifically be included the
bronze bust of Junius Brutus and that in
marble of Marcus Brutus, both located
in the Capitol, and five hundred manu-
scripts chosen by the commissioners."'1
Similar clauses were written into every
treaty signed in Italy, although looting
of the old-fashioned kind also occurred.
French commissioners spent two years
in Italy supervising the selection, remov-
al, and transport of the plunder sent to
France; in addition to manuscripts and
works of art, it included furniture, tapes-
tries, scientific specimens and instru-
ments, even plants and animals, in short
nearly everything that could be car-
ried off from the Italian peninsula
(Fig. 2).12
f the art of Italy was not the first-
and certainly not the last-loot of the
Revolution, it was the most esteemed,
for it included the sculpture of antiquity
and the painting of the Renaissance and
the Baroque. It was appropriated by a
general astute enough to turn its posses-
sion to political advantage by playing on
the longstanding French desire to
156 Art Journal
Fig. 2 George Cruikshank, Seizing the Italian Relics, 1814.
replace Rome as the center of culture
and civilization. Francois I and Louis
XIV had, in previous centuries, looked
longingly eastward at a capital that
made theirs, by comparison, seem pro-
vincial.'3 But Bonaparte was motivated
less by aesthetic than by political ambi-
tion. Of the one hundred choice works of
art ceded by the Treaty of Tolentino,
eighty-four antique sculptures were
chosen for shipment to France. For him
these sculptures represented, first and
foremost, trophies, the signs of Empire.
Bonaparte was not the only French-
man to believe that these sculptures
paraded through Paris in 1798 were all
original works that the Romans them-
selves had looted from the Greeks. Vir-
tually every official speech on the sub-
ject from 1794 to 1815 repeated a litany
of conquest clearly articulated at the
1798 festival: "The Romans plundered
the Etruscans, the Greeks, and the
Egyptians, accumulated [the sculp-
tures] in Rome and other Italian cities;
the fate of these productions of genius is
to belong to the people who shine succes-
sively on earth by arms and by wisdom,
and to follow always the wagons of the
victors."'4 This apology served the dou-
ble advantage of both justifying French
looting as being in the grand tradition
and identifying that looting as a ritual
ceremony of accession to empire. The
ceremonial display of the antique sculp-
ture as "trophies" in 1798 signified con-
quest of Rome just as the depiction on
the Arch of Titus of the menorah carried
in triumph had signified the Roman
conquest of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (Fig.
3). In the aftermath of 10 Thermidor
Year 2 (1794), with Robespierre fallen
and the Terror ended, the Revolutionary
spirit had ebbed away, the economy was
limping along, and strong measures had
to be taken to enlist public support for
wars abroad and the Directory at home.
In all the letters and memoranda con-
cerning the projected festival of looted
art, it was repeatedly stressed that pub-
lic spirit had to somehow be rekindled.
The Fete offered an appeal to patriotism
combined with the lust for booty; it
turned out to be a winning combination.
Politically, the looting was applauded
in France, but in the cultural milieu
Napoleon's intentions of plundering the
Italian peninsula were not at first uni-
versally acclaimed. In 1796, Qua-
tremere de Quincy published a long
essay passionately condemning the "re-
moval of the art monuments from Italy,
the dismemberment of her schools of
art, and the despoiling of her collections,
galleries, museums, etc."15 He stated:
"Moreover I believe it equally injurious
to the eighteenth century to suspect it of
being capable of reviving this Roman
right of conquest that renders men and
things the property of the strongest."
That same year, forty-seven of the most
distinguished French painters, sculp-
tors, and architects-including David,
Soufflot, Valenciennes, Pajou, Vien,
Suvee, Peyron, many of them members
of the Institut national des sciences et
des arts-signed a petition urging the
Directory to reconsider its decision to
strip Rome of its monuments.16 Al-
though this petition went unpublished, a
second group of thirty-seven artists,
much less eminent than the first, pub-
lished a counterpetition in the Gazette
nationale, the official newspaper, in
which they defended the decision to loot
Rome. The Romans, they claimed, were
lazy, superstitious barbarians who
neither respected nor deserved their art
treasures; as Rome itself had obtained
them by conquest of Greece, so France
had a right to appropriate them in
turn.l7 Despite the opposition to looting
previously expressed by many of its

members, in the following year the Insti-
tut itself (which was, it must be remem-
bered, a government agency) wrote a
special report for the Minister of the
Interior expressing its support for the
policy.'8 It proposed, and even offered to
help to organize, a festival celebrating
the Italian convoy's arrival in Paris:
"What could be more appropriate to
revive and strengthen public spirit than
to exhibit ceremonially to the French
people this striking witness of its gran-
deur and its power?" Quatremere's bro-
chure, the artists' petition, counterpeti-
tion, the Institut's report, all set out the
arguments, pro and con, for looting the
eternal city. The interesting thing is that
here, for the first time, such arguments
were necessary. We might think of this
as the self-consciousness provided by the
Enlightenment, which extolled ideal
civic relationships.
he spoils of war could simply have
been distributed among the mili-
tary leaders as in that other classical
precedent, the Trojan War, or they
could have been quietly unloaded into
the new museum in the Louvre, opened
in 1793. And yet, when the works appro-
priated by the Treaty of Tolentino left
Italy in convoy in 1797, plans were
already afoot for a triumphal entry to
Paris, although no such entry had
greeted the convoys previously sent from
Belgium.'9 Everyone, it seems, recog-
nized the advantage to be gained from
the double authority of antique art. The
Commissioners from Italy who had
chosen it and supervised its shipment
kept up a steady stream of letters to the
Directory. Commissioner Thouin was
the most determined: "Will we let the
precious booty from Rome arrive in
Paris like charcoal barges and will we
have it disembarked on the Quai du
Louvre like crates of soap?," he asked.20
In voluminous correspondence he out-
lined every aspect of the proposed festi-
val: for the first wagon of the cortege, he
proposed a banner reading "Monuments
to the Victories of the Army of Italy";
Bonaparte, he hoped, would underwrite
the cost.21 Letourneux, Minister of the
Interior, also saw it as a vehicle for
Bonaparte: "He will see in this cere-
mony a sketch of the triumph that
awaits him on his return."22 Nonethe-
less, even with the backing of the Insti-
tut, the project would probably have had
to be abandoned for lack of funds had
not a letter arrived from the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs: "I have the honor of
informing you that General-in-chief
Bonaparte has resolved to make avail-
able the funds necessary for the trans-
port to Paris of the monuments of
Rome."23
The advantage of such a fete for
Bonaparte's future ambitions is obvious,
for, as in the Roman triumphs it imi-
tated, it would celebrate the conquering
general as much as the conquered trea-
sures. From the beginning, Bonaparte
and the Directory had extracted as
much benefit as possible from the plun-
der's prestige; each time a new convoy
from Italy arrived in Paris, the
announcement and inventory were pub-
lished in the Gazette nationale.24 Bona-
parte's letters to the Directory regularly
appeared in the official newspaper and
showed him quantifying aesthetics as
the only way of conveying value (Fig. 4):
"Citizen Barthelemy is busy at the
moment choosing the pictures from
Bologna. He is counting on taking
around fifty of them, including the Saint
Cecilia that is said to be the masterpiece
of Michelangelo"; he meant Raphael.25
"The famous painting of Saint Jerome is
so esteemed in this country that they
have offered a million to buy it back."6
In this respect, as in so many others,
Bonaparte anticipated our modern age
for, during the Enlightenment, works of
art were discussed more in transcendent
than in commercial terms, particularly
by public officials.27
s the convoy from Italy bearing the
antique sculpture proceeded slowly
towards Paris, the festival celebrating
its arrival began taking shape. The
numerous extant drafts of the program
for the "Triumphal entry of objects of
arts and sciences gathered in Italy"
attest to the careful planning that went
into even the most minor questions of
precedence and protocol. In the constant
changes can be seen the relative posi-
tions of the two protagonist groups, the
cultural (the Institut) and the political
(the Government).
The first government proposal came
from Letourneux, who, in April 1798,
reported to the Directory: "The govern-
ment commissioners for art, the litera-
ture and fine arts sections of the Institut,
poets, philosophers, public officials
especially, all those who feel the need of
restoring public spirit and of increasing
national pride by having the spoils of the
conquered peoples pass before the eyes
of our people, all join in requesting that
the day that these fruits of our victories
enter into Paris be celebrated by a festi-
val."28 In response, the Directory
decreed that such a festival should take
place, the date to be set when the con-
voy's arrival was imminent.29 The first
program, dated a few weeks later, cele-
brated "cultural Rome," proposing that
the triumphal entry be designed by the
architect Chalgrin, who had been in
charge of official festivals since 1794.30
Participants would include learned soci-
eties, schools, artists, and a ballet, "The
Offering to Liberty"; members of the
Institut would surround the Altar of the
Fatherland; and the Commissioners
from Italy would dedicate to them "all
the conquered riches." On the second
day, the President of the Institut would
present the "conquered riches" to the
Directory. This program draft was soon
superseded by another, in which the
Academicians at the Altar of the
Fatherland were replaced by members
of the Directory and public officials. In
Summer 1989 157

this revised program, the dedication
speeches of the Commissioners from
Italy would then be addressed to political,
not cultural, authorities.31
In the final version, the extremes
of both the "cultural" and the "political"
programs were modified by giving
each party one day. On the first day the
Commissioners formally presented the
plunder of the Italian campaign to the
Minister of the Interior; surrounded
by members of the Institut, he thanked
the commissioners in the name of artists
and scholars. On the second day, he
presented the monuments to the Directory
in the presence of military
representatives.
The original plan was that the festival
would be included in the July 14 celebrations,
but the convoy was delayed en
route through France and did not arrive
in time.33 Plans were hastily revised to
incorporate the triumphal entry into the
Fete de la Liberte of 9 and 10 Thermidor
(July 27-28).34 This annual festival
had been decreed three years earlier to
celebrate the fall of Robespierre;35 the
parade of loot from Italy would thus
reinforce its message that the "fruits of
liberty" were the consequence of the end
of the Terror and its replacement by the
Directory.
rl 'hp ennfle frnm It-aliI tpt-rmm +k,-
lands, carried a banner identifying its
contents since most of the works of art
were still in crates. There were three
divisions: Natural History, Books and
Manuscripts, and Fine Arts; a detach-
ment of military troops followed each
division. The organization of the march
showed the Enlightenment emphasis on
the encyclopedic organization of knowl-
edge, here turned towards a political
end, namely, the symbolic displacement
of the capital of Western civilization
from Rome to Paris. The announcement
of the Fete in the Gazette nationale
stated:
This festival, already so cherished
by all Frenchmen, will be still fur-
ther embellished by the triumphal
entry of the objects of science and
art gathered in Italy. The banana,
palm, coconut, and papaya trees
that Citizen Baudin ordered
brought from the isle of Trinidad
will cover them with their shade;
animals from the burning deserts
of Africa and from glacial North-
ern climates will accompany them.
Thus all parts of the world have
been made to contribute to enrich
the most beautiful of our festivals
and to make it as magnificent as
the triumphal entry of Aemilius
Paulus into Rome.
1
'
3Yll; bU11U III lLdly
UtdlUli,l
LII,U
. focus of the festival, replacing its That Triumph, described by Plutarch,
original program.36 A detachment of celebrated Aemilius' victory over the
cavalry and a military band led the Macedonians in A.D. 167; it continued
parade; each wagon, decorated with gar- for three days with the entire first day
Fig. 4 "Well, Gentlemen, 2,000,000 Francs!"
158 Art Journal
taken up by a procession of plundered
art objects carried on 250 chariots.38
The First Division of the Fete de la
Liberte, led by professors of Natural
History, had ten wagons carrying animal,
vegetable, and mineral specimens.
There were items such as seeds and
tropical plants, scientific and agricultural
instruments and implements, mineral
samples, and-to the delight of the
spectators-lions
and camels from
Africa and a bear from Bern.39 The
tropical contributions, joined to the Italian
convoy at Marseilles, were especially
significant since exotic animals had
been an important aspect of the traditional
Roman triumph. The banners on
each wagon identified its contents and
displayed mottoes such as, for the tools
and implements: "Ceres smiles on our
trophies"; for petrified rock specimens
from Verona: "Monuments to the antiquity
of the world."
The Second Division included six
wagons of books, manuscripts, medallions,
musical texts, and printing elements,
Asian language print fonts being
particularly valuable. The accompanying
cortege included a choir of
musicians singing patriotic hymns,
members of societies of arts and
sciences, deputations representing theaters,
libraries, technical schools, publishers,
and the professors of the College
de France carrying a bust of Homer on a
tripod.
Leading the Third Division, Fine
Arts, was a banner announcing "The
Arts seek the land where laurels grow."
Accompanied by a choir of young artists,
the division included museum
administrators and all the professors
and students from art schools. The four
bronze horses taken from the Cathedral
of San Marco at Venice preceded the
whole procession just as in Roman
triumphs four horses had led the way.
Their banner read, "Horses transported
from Corinth to Rome and from Rome
to Constantinople, from Constantinople
to Venice, and from Venice to France.
They are finally in a free land."
Thought to be by Lysippus himself, the
four horses were an ideal symbol of
cultural and political authority.
The sculpture section was led by a
banner reading, "Monuments of Antique
Sculpture. Greece gave them up;/
Rome lost them;/
Their fate has twice
changed;/ it will not change again."
There followed twenty-five wagons of
the most celebrated antique sculpture in
the world, most of it previously on dis-
play in Roman museums: the Capitoline
Venus, the Discobolos, the Spinario, the
Laocobn, the Apollo Belvedere, the
Capitoline Antinous, the Dying Gaul,
etc. By eighteenth-century standards,

c. 1800-14.
Bonaparte had been quite accurate in
bragging that "we will have everything
beautiful in Italy."40 Last came two
wagons of paintings. The first, "The
Roman School," carried the Transfigu-
ration of Raphael, as well as works by
Domenichino and Giulio Romano; on it
was a banner reading, "Artists, come
running! Here are your masters!" The
last wagon, "The Venetian School,"
held works by Titian and Veronese but
carried no inscription. In this politico-
aesthetic context, Venice could not com-
pete with Rome.
The bust of Junius Brutus was carried
at the end of the march and ceremonial-
ly placed on a pedestal before the Altar
of the Fatherland; on the pedestal was a
plaque stating, "Rome was first gov-
erned by kings:/ Junius Brutus gave it
liberty and the Republic." After the
Commissioners from Italy presented
their inventories to the new Minister of
the Interior, Neufchateau, with many
speeches all around, the "cultural" festi-
val ended with a salvo of artillery fol-
lowed by orchestras, dancing, and fire-
works. The "political" ceremony, held
on the second day, had representatives
of the government and the military in
attendance; the music consisted of mili-
tary marches. When Neufchateau pre-
sented the inventories to the Directory
at the Altar of the Fatherland, only the
military was present; military maneu-
vers and a balloon launching concluded
the ceremonies.
In the speeches are revealed the issues
and intentions that informed the event.
When Thouin presented the inventories
to Neufchateau, he stated: "The com-
mission of sciences and arts in Italy is
honored to present to you the monu-
ments of the victories of the armies of
the Republic in this part of Europe." He
directly praised Bonaparte, the hidden
presence behind the festival: "The gen-
eral-in-chief whose genius organized the
victory in Italy has shown foresight in
organizing even the scientific contribu-
tions."41 In response, Neufchateau
stated: "The prime sentiment that the
sight of such a rich and extensive gath-
ering of masterpieces of all centuries
inspires in Republican hearts is that of
gratitude to the generous armies of the
French Republic."42 He concluded:
"Here is the triumphal ceremony, here
is the expiating ceremony for the crimes
of the tyranny overthrown on 9 Thermi-
dor."43 The plunder from Italy would
wash clean the Revolution, and Revolu-
tionary principles would sanitize the
looting. As the Institut report on the
festival had suggested: "We will thus
absolve the French nation of this charge
of vandalism, so often repeated by its
enemies; in the midst of the expenses of
war its government still finds the means
of giving such splendor to the fine
arts."44
he 1798 Fete de la Liberte cele-
brated more than the triumphal
entry of the Italian plunder to Paris: it
celebrated the adoption of antique art as
the official art of the state and cemented
the union of the state and the Institut in
their mutual esteem for that art.
Although this was the first and last time
that art was paraded through the streets
of Paris, Bonaparte continued to exploit
its double authority after his rise to
power.
Each time a new convoy of art plun-
dered from Italy arrived, it was cele-
brated with a special exhibition in the
Louvre, now called the Musee central
des arts: in 1798 works from Lombardy,
Venice, Rome; in 1800 from Florence
and Turin; in 1802 from Florence,
Turin, and Foligno; in 1803 from
Venice, Florence, Naples, Turin, and
Bologna; in 1805, from Parma and
Venice.45 Each exhibition was accompa-
nied by a catalogue that blatantly
extolled military might: "Not until all
the monuments have arrived and are
united with those which have come from
Belgium and Diisseldorf can this
immortal trophy of our victories be con-
sidered complete; only then will we be
able to feel the extent of the gratitude
that the Fatherland, and the arts in
particular, owe to our invincible
armies."46
The newly installed Gallery of Antiq-
uity in the Louvre (Fig. 5) was opened
to the public on 18 Brumaire Year 9
(November 9, 1800) to coincide with the
anniversary of the 1799 coup d'etat that
had brought Napoleon to power. The
preface to its catalogue began with the
statement: "The majority of statues
exhibited in the Gallery of Antiquity are
the fruits of the conquests of the Army
of Italy."47 On opening day, Bonaparte
visited the gallery with an official dele-
gation and attached a plaque to the
pedestal of the Apollo Belvedere: "The
statue of Apollo/ Erected on this pedes-
tal/ Found at Antium, at the end of the
XV century, placed in the Vatican by
Julius II/ At the beginning of the XVI
century/ Conquered in the Year V of
the Republic/ By the Army of Italy/
Under the orders of General Bonaparte/
Has been set here on 21 Germinal Year
VIII/ First year of his Consulate."48
In 1803 the Musee central des arts
was renamed the Musee Napoleon.49
Although the Venus de Medici arrived
from Naples too late to be included in
that year's July 14 celebration, Bona-
parte nonetheless had a medal struck
commemorating the occasion. It repre-
sented on one side his portrait as First
Consul, and on the other the Venus de
Medici with the somewhat ambiguous
legend: To the Arts, the Victory.5 The
first anniversary of the 1806 Battle of
Jena was celebrated with a major exhi-
bition of conquered antiquities.51 A
colossal bust of Napoleon himself was
placed over the entrance to the "Musee
des antiques," and the artists Gerard
Summer 1989 159

and Gros were commissioned to decorate
the Louvre with paintings commemorating,
respectively, "The arrival
in Paris of the monuments of arts conquered
by the Treaty of Tolentino" and
"The Emperor giving France the masterpieces
of antique sculpture."52 By the
end of Napoleon's reign, more than four
hundred antique statues, busts, and
reliefs were on display in the Louvre,
which now possessed virtually all the
most esteemed art in the Western
world;53 only insufficient technology had
prevented the removal of Trajan's Column
and the transport of the major
frescoes of the Renaissance.54
The horses of San Marco, which had
led the fine-arts division in 1798, continued
to serve a political function. In
1807 they were placed on the newly
erected Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel
modeled after the Roman Arch of Constantine.55
The arch, erected on the
former site of the guillotine, carries a
long inscription commemorating the
1805 victories of the French army in
Germany and Austria; since Austria
had been the previous ruler of Venice,
the horses became, again, a trophy of
war.
Although by 1814 French armies had
swept through most of Europe, the plunder
from no other country could provide
the combined political and cultural
authority Napoleon sought; only the
plunder from Italy was accorded the
honors of state.
n 1814, just as the French were orga-
nizing the first exhibition of Italian
primitive painting with the last convoy
of spoils from Italy, the first great
museum age came abruptly to an end;
Napoleon, defeated, abdicated and the
monarchy was restored.56 Throughout
1814 and 1815 the allies arrived in Paris
demanding the return of their art.57 In
the efforts of Louis XVIII, France's
restored monarch, to preserve the art
legacy of the Revolution accumulated
by his hated predecessor Napoleon, we
can see the vital political significance
attached to possession of the world's art
treasures.58 The loss of the art from Italy
would be the most painful, for, just as
this art had provided both political and
cultural authority, so its loss would
mark a political as well as cultural
defeat; Paris was in danger of losing
both Romes. The Restoration govern-
ment used every means in its power to
impede restitution, even refusing to pay
return shipping costs; many previous
owners, such as the Albani, were thus
forced to sell their collections in Paris.59
The Prussians simply climbed the Arc
du Carrousel and, to the outrage of the
French, took down the San Marco
160 Art Journal
horses and sent them back to Venice.60
Several of the largest antique sculp-
tures, including the Melpomene and the
Tiber, were left in the Louvre, where
they are still on display, as is the entire
collection of Italian primitives and
Veronese's Marriage at Cana. The
sculptor Antonio Canova, the Papal
ambassador, concentrated his efforts on
regaining the antique sculpture and
managed to bring back seventy-seven of
the original hundred Papal works (Fig.
6).61 For his loyalty to Italy, Canova was
vilified in France and his full-length
nude statue of Napoleon, doubly anath-
ema to the restored monarchy because
of both subject and artist, ended up as a
war trophy in the Duke of Wellington's
Apsley House in London.62 Despite all
efforts, only about half the art plunder
was ever returned; the percentage of
books, manuscripts, and natural science
collections repatriated is no doubt even
lower.63 French reaction then and now
was best expressed by Stendhal, who
wrote indignantly: "The allies have
taken from us 1,150 pictures. I hope that
I am allowed to note that we acquired
the best of them by a treaty, that of
Tolentino. ... The allies, on the other
hand, took our pictures from us without
a treaty."64
The English, who had lost no art and
could therefore claim nothing, nonethe-
less supported Canova in his efforts to
repatriate the Italian art treasures. Had
they not chosen to come in on the side of
Italy, all the classical sculpture would
probably have remained in France, for,
unlike the Prussians, the Pope had no
armies to back up his claims. British
support for Italy was not, however, an
entirely disinterested gesture; as Lord
Liverpool, the English Prime Minister,
wrote of the sculptures: "The Prince
Regent is desirous of getting some of
them for a Museum or a gallery here.
The men of taste and virtu encourage
this idea."65
he eighteenth-century esteem for
classical art is well known, but it
has not been remarked that the first
museum age saw grand-scale efforts on
the part of governments to collect
antique art-sometimes by purchase,
sometimes by plunder-in fierce compe-
tition with one another. French art loot-
ing of the Revolutionary period was
followed by Lord Elgin's removal of the
Parthenon sculptures and their trans-
port to England; they were acquired by
the British Museum in 1816 only after it
was clear that England would not bene-
fit from the dispersal of the French art
loot.66 In Germany, Ludwig of Bavaria
was steadily purchasing collections of
classical art, acquiring the sculptures
from the Temple of Aegina in 1812. He
had unsuccessfully attempted to pur-
chase the Elgin marbles but did acquire
the Albani collection, which he dis-
played in the Glyptothek in Munich,
especially built to house antique art.67
Because it was universally accepted
that the cultural lineage of Europe
flowed from Egypt to Greece to Rome,
whatever nation was in possession of the
major antiquities of these ancient civili-
zations became symbolically the torch-
bearer of Western culture. From the
Roman antiquities to the Parthenon
sculpture to the Egyptian Rosetta stone,
England, France, and Germany com-
peted for the cultural authority that
symbolized political power.68 Even the
French Academy wanted and needed
the authority of antique art to position
itself in a direct line from antiquity.
Rubens, Titian, Veronese, whatever
they could offer to artists by way of
aesthetic authority, could offer nothing
to the state; only Rome could provide
this double authority. Classicism, Neo-
classicism, and their Academic issue
thus enjoyed, in nineteenth-century
France, a symbiotic relationship with
government, which aesthetics alone can-
not explain. The political dimension of
this phenomenon becomes invisible
when it is attributed merely to "taste" or
to "the cult of the antique."
And so, in 1815, the maneuvering
Fig. 6 The Return of the Art in 1815.
among the major powers for possession
of the French art loot masked a deeper
issue: the location of the future cultural
capital of Europe. Rome, the unchal-
lenged center of eighteenth-century civ-
ilization, had been pillaged of its trea-
sures and could hardly continue to hold
that title. The English were very much

aware of the implications. Lord Liver-
pool wrote: "The reasonable part of the
world are for general restoration to the
original possessors; but they say, with
truth, that we have a better title to them
than the French, if legitimate war gives
a title to such objects; and they blame
the policy of leaving the trophies of the
French victories at Paris, and making
that capital in future the centre of the
arts."69 The Germans were also aware of
the problem. A petition from the foreign
artists in Rome to Lord Castlereagh
(the head of the English mission in
Paris) urged him to use all his influence
to have the art returned: "This eternal
city, by a set of circumstances unique in
the history of the world, has become the
capital of the arts for all peoples."70
Paris, the artists claimed, would con-
strict an artist's development "by a sys-
tem of rules and of fashions." Paris was
full of "distractions, of tumult"; a
momentary success there would propel
the artist towards "false and petty man-
nerisms." Rome, on the other hand, was
open to artists of all nationalities. There
they could work peacefully, learning
from the monuments of antiquity, and
be assured of "a pure and tranquil
enjoyment of the arts." The letter was
signed by forty artists, nearly all from
Northern Europe; the largest group, the
German Nazarenes, included Cornelius,
Overbeck, Veit, the Schadows. In this
moving plea, we can sense the Northern
artists' desperation to preserve a politi-
cally neutral cultural capital.
Despite the restitutions, France re-
tained enough art to ensure that the
Louvre remained the major museum of
Europe. Rome never reclaimed either all
its art or all its glory, and the Nazarenes
represented the last major art movement
centered there. Paris, despite its distrac-
tions (or perhaps because of them),
became the art capital of the Western
world, a position it retained until World
War II. The most prophetic note of the
1798 Fete de la Liberte had been struck
by Neufchateau, who had mused:
In seeing these treasures that the
spirit of liberty has conquered for
us, we are moved to think that
there will no longer exist a single
gifted man in the arts or sciences
who will not come to our shores to
enrich his knowledge and his taste,
to compare his genius with that of
the masterpieces France owns, and
to develop his ideas in converse
with republican artists and schol-
ars. What people, other than the
French, has ever assured itself an
empire of the future! What other
has known how to tie its glory to
the progress of the human spirit!71
Paris had successfully stolen the idea of
modern art away from Rome and would
keep it until, invaded by Germany in
1940, it underwent cultural upheavals
similar to those it had inflicted on eigh-
teenth-century Rome. In the aftermath,
the art capital of the world once again
moved west-to New York City.
Notes
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the City
University of New York PSC-CUNY Research
Award Program, which funded the research for
this article.
1 The song is given in the account of the festival
published in Le Ridacteur, No. 957, 12 Ther-
midor Year 6, pp. 1-6. Of the accounts of art
looting during the Revolutionary period, the
most reliable are: Charles Saunier, Les Con-
quetes artistiques de la Revolution et de l'Em-
pire, Paris, 1902; M. L. Blumer, "La Commis-
sion pour la recherche des objets de sciences et
arts en Italie, 1796-1797," Rivolution
francaise, 1934, pp. 62-88, 124-50, 222-59;
Eugene Miintz, "Les annexations de collections
d'art ou de bibliotheques et leur role dans les
relations internationales principalement pen-
dant la Revolution francaise," Revue d'histoire
diplomatique, 8 (1894), pp. 481-97, 9 (1895),
pp. 375-93, 10 (1896), pp. 481-508. For an
excellent short summary and a catalogue iden-
tifying many of the looted antique sculptures,
see: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny,
Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical
Sculpture, 1500-1900, New Haven and Lon-
don, 1981. For summaries in English, largely
based on Saunier, see: D. M. Quynn, "Art
Confiscations of the Napoleonic Wars," Amer-
ican Historical Review, 50 (1945), pp. 437-60;
and Cecil Gould, Trophy of Conquest: The
Musie Napoleon and the Creation of the
Louvre, London, 1965. The standard works on
Revolutionary festivals are: Mona Ozouf, Fes-
tivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan
Sheridan, Cambridge, MA and London, 1988;
and David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant Master of the
Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French
Revolution, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1948. While
acknowledging my debt to the work of these
scholars, I have tried to keep as close as possible
to the original sources since errors have crept
into some subsequent accounts, and reference
numbers in the Archives nationales have some-
times changed.
2 See: Haskell and Penny (cited n. 1), pp. 108-
16; Gould (cited n. 1), p. 49.
3 See: Quynn (cited n. 1); Martha L. Turner,
"French Art Confiscations in the Roman
Republic, 1798," in The Consortium on Revo-
lutionary Europe, 1750-1850, Proceedings
(1980), Athens, GA, vol. 2, pp. 43-51.
4 For a brief account of Hitler's and Goering's
art thefts, see: Russell Chamberlin, Loot! The
Heritage of Plunder, N.Y., 1983, pp. 149-87. I
thank John Gregory for this reference.
5 See: Charles Piot, Rapport a M. le Ministre de
l'Interieur sur les tableaux enleves a la Bel-
gique en 1794 et restitues en 1815, Brussels,
1883, pp 2ff.
6 Proces-verbaux of 29 Prairial Year 2, in
Proces-verbaux du comiti d'instruction pub-
lique de la convention nationale, ed. James
Guillaume, Paris, 1901, vol. 4 (ler germinal an
II [21 mars 1794]-11 fructidor an II [28 aofit
1794]), pp. 654-55.
7 "Lettre du president du comite d'instruction
publique au comite de salut public," 8 messidor
an II, Ibid., vol. 4, p. 658. For the arrival of the
first convoy, see: "Convention nationale,"
Gazette nationale ou Le Moniteur universel
(hereafter GN), no. 3 bis, 3 Vend6miaire Year
3 (September 24, 1794).
8 The philosophical formulation of this concept is
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Le Contrat social,
first published in 1762.
9 See, for example: Louis Hautecoeur, Histoire
du Louvre. Le Chateau. Le Palais. Le Musee.
Des Origines i nos jours, 1200-1928, Paris,
1928, p. 89. Non-French publications take a
completely different view of the matter.
10 See: "Int6rieur. Paris le 4 juin," Le Moniteur
universel, No. 156, (June 5, 1814), p. 612.
11 For the Treaty of Bologna of 4 messidor an IV
(June 22, 1796), see: Correspondance de
Napoleon ler, publiee par ordre de l'Empereur
Napoleon III, Paris, 1858, vol. 1, pp. 525-30,
no. 672, art. 8; for the Treaty of Tolentino, ler
vent6se an V (February 19, 1797), see: vol. 2,
pp. 444-49, no. 1511. The list of chosen objects
is in Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN)
F17 1279, doss.4, "Liste des objets d'arts
design6s et choisis par les commissaires du
gouvernement francais en vertu de l'article huit
de l'armistice conclu entre la R6publique et sa
Saintete le Pape;" it is included in Correspon-
dance des directeurs de l'Academie de France
h Rome avec les surintendants des batiments,
ed. Anatole de Montaiglon and Jules Guiffrey,
Paris, 1907, vol. 16 (1791-1797), no. 9564, pp.
448-49, and no. 9575, pp. 462-67.
12 The inventory lists are in AN F17 1275A and
F17 1278/1279. A partial published listing is
"Specchio Generale di tutti gli oggetti d'arti e
scienze che partono da Roma per Parigi
nell'anno VI dell'era repubblicana," in Corre-
spondance de Napoleon I (cited n. 11), vol. 3,
pp. 498-505. The correspondence of the com-
missioners is included in Montaiglon and Guif-
frey (cited n. 11). I am grateful to Nina Atha-
nassoglou-Kallmyer for the Cruikshank illus-
tration (Fig. 2).
13 For the ambitions of earlier monarchs, see:
Haskell and Penny (cited n. 1), ch. I and VI.
14 Thouin (one of the Commissioners in Italy) in
his speech to the Ministre de l'Interieur Neuf-
chateau; see: AN ADVIII-18, liasse 4, no. 26,
"Extrait du proces verbal de la seance du
Directoire executif, du 10 thermidor an 6"; Le
Redacteur published an expanded version of
this; see no. 957 (12 Thermidor Year 6), p. 1.
Also see "Convention nationale. Rapport sur
les destructions op6eres par le vandalisme, et
sur les moyens de le r6primer; fait par
Gr6goire, au nom du comit6 d'instruction pub-
lique. Seance du 14 fructidor," GN, 9
Vend6miaire Year 3 (September 30, 1794).
"Institut national des sciences et des arts. Rap-
Summer 1989 161

port a la classe de litt6rature et beaux-arts,
relativement a l'arriv6e a Paris des objets d'arts
conquis en Italie par nos armees; par une
Commission nomm6e le 8 fructidor, an 5me.
Seance du 4 brumaire l'an 6" in AN F17 1279,
doss.8.
15 A. Q. [Quatremere de Quincy], Lettres sur le
prejudice qu'occasionneroient aux arts et a la
science, le deplacement des monuments de I'art
de l'Italie, le demembrement de ses ecoles, et
la spoliation de ses collections, galeries,
musees, etc. Paris, Year 4 (1796), reprinted
Rome 1815 with the artists' 1796 petition
included; p. 7.
16"Petition d'artists au Directoire ex6cutif, 28
thermidor an IV," in AN F17 1279, doss.l.
Saunier gives the text and states that fifty-two
artists, but not David, signed it; the signature
"David, peintre" is unmistakable on the origi-
nal petition, which shows forty-seven signa-
tures.
17 "Petition pr6sentee par les artistes au directoire
ex6cutif," GN No. 12, 12 Vend6miaire Year 5
(October 3, 1796), pp. 45-46. Some historians
state that this letter was signed by the most
illustrious artists of the time, but the only
important signatories were J.B. Isabey, Gerard,
Regnault, and Vernet.
18 The report is cited in n. 14 above.
19 A letter from Letourneux, Minister of the
Interior, to Thouin and Moitte, Commissioners
in Italy, dated Vend6miaire Year 6, states that
his predecessor (Neufchateau) had already had
the idea of a triumphal entry, but the problem
had been "the poverty of our finances"; the
letter is in AN F17 1275A, liasse 1, doss.3.
20 Thouin to the President of the Directory, Mar-
seille, 6 Vend6miaire Year 6, in AN F17
1275A, liasse 1, doss.3. The letter is quoted by
Saunier, but he has cut several passages and
the AN reference given is incorrect. Most
historians mistranslate butin ("booty") as "re-
lics."
21 Thouin to the President of the Directory, Mar-
seilles, 6 Vend6miaire Year 6 in AN F17
1275A, liasse 1, doss.3. The dossier contains an
earlier, similar letter from the Commissaires
du gouvernement francais to the Minister of
the Interior (Letourneux) dated Aries, 3 Fri-
maire Year 5; also see their letters in AN F17
1279, doss.8: Arles, 16 Frimaire Year 6; Aries,
18 Frimaire Year 6.
22 Ministre de l'Int6rieur [Letourneux] aux Com-
missaires du gouvernement francais [Thouin
and Moitte], vend6miaire an 6, F17 1275A,
liasse 1, doss.3.
23 L'Agent des relations ext6rieurs au Ministre de
l'Int6rieur a Paris. Marseilles, 11 vend6miaire
an 6; F17 1275A, liasse 1, doss.l. Historians
have overlooked this letter and have not
remarked that Bonaparte subsidized the festi-
val.
24 For an example, see: "Armee d'ltalie. Etat des
objets de sciences et arts qui ont ete enleves
pour etre transportes a Paris, par les ordres du
general en chef de l'arm6e d'Italie, et ceux du
commissaire du gouvernement pres ladite
162 Art Journal
armee," GN No. 258, 18 Prairial Year 4 (June
6, 1796). Other notices were published on 25
Brumaire Year 5 (November 15, 1796); 8
Frimaire Year 5 (November 28, 1796); 26
Vent6se Year 5 (March 16, 1797); the practice
continued until 1814.
25 Bonaparte au Directoire ex6cutif, Bologna, 3
messidor an 4 (June 21, 1796), No. 663 in
Correspondance de Napolion I (cited n. 11),
vol. 1, p. 516. It was published in GN, 14
Messidor Year 4 (July 2, 1796): "Buonaparte,
general en chef de l'arm6e d'Italie, au Direc-
toire executif." Bonaparte's error was correc-
ted in his published Correspondance.
26 Ibid. He was referring to Correggio's Madonna
with Saint Jerome, taken from Parma.
27 The clearest exposition of the shift in values is
in R6my G. Saisselin, The Bourgeois and the
Bibelot, New Brunswick, NJ, 1984.
28 AN F17 1279, doss.8, "Rapport au Direc-
toire," probably from Minister of the Interior
Letourneux, dated 3 [Flor6al?] Year 6.
Attached to it is a proposal entitled "Entree
Triomphale des objets des sciences et d'arts
recueillis en Italie." Although some studies
state that the Fete was modeled after the Fete
des Victoires, designed by M. J. Ch6nier, the
two festivals had little in common; see: Saunier,
p. 36; Blumer, 'Commission," p. 240 (both
cited n.1); and Convention Nationale, Rapport
sur la Fete des Victoires qui doit etre celebree
le decadi 30 vendimiaire, I'an III de la Ripub-
lique francaise une et indivisible, fait i la
Convention Nationale, au nom du Comite d'in-
struction publique, par Marie-Joseph Chenier.
Le 27 vendemiaire, I'an 3 (1794).
29 The decree is contained in F17 1279, doss.8,
"Ampliation. Extrait des registres du Direc-
toire ex6cutif du 7e jour du mois flor6al an 6"
(April 26, 1798).
30 AN F 17 1279, doss.8, "Bases du programme a
rediger pour la fete de la libert6 et l'entree des
monuments conquis en Italie; Propos6es au
Directoire ex6cutif," in "Rapport pr6sent6 au
Directoire ex6cutif par le Ministre de
l'Interieur, le-prairial, an 6."
31 AN F17 1279, doss.8, Ministre de l'Int6rieur,
"Entree Triomphale des objets de sciences et
d'arts recueillis en Italie. Programme" Al-
though it is undated, it is much more complete
and announces that the fete will take place on
26 Messidor (July 14).
32 AN F17 1279, doss.8, Ministre de l'Int6rieur,
"Fetes de la Libert6 et entree triomphale des
objets de sciences et d'arts recueillis en Italie.
Programme." This program seems to be the
last version since it conforms to the published
one and includes the actual date of the festival.
The program was published as Fetes de la
Liberte, et Entree Triomphale des objets de
sciences et d'arts recueillis en Italie. Pro-
gramme, Paris, Thermidor Year 6. It is
included in Recueil des lettres circulaires,
instructions, programmes, discours, et autres
actes publics, emanes du Citoyen Francois (de
Neufchateau) pendant ses deux exercices du
Ministere de l'interieur, Paris, Year 12-13,
vol. 1, pp. 12-30. For a description of the
festival, see: AN ADVIII-18 (cited n. 14), and
Le Ridacteur Nos. 953-957 (9-12 Thermidor
Year 6). Also see: "Vari&ets," in La Decade
philosophique, litteraire, et politique, 4th tri-
mester, Year 6 (1798), pp. 301-5.
33 Les Commissaires du gouvernement au Min-
istre de l'lnterieur, Fontainebleau, 25 messidor
an 6. F17 1275A, liasse 1, doss.l. The arrival
was announced in GN No. 306, 6 Thermidor
Year 6 (July 24, 1798); see: "R6publique
francaise. Paris, le 5 thermidor," and "Etat des
chefs d'oeuvres rassembles sur le convoi arrive
d'Italie." Neufchateau replaced Letourneux as
Minister of the Interior on 29 Prairial (June
17).
34 Le Redacteur, No. 951,6 Thermidor Year 6, p.
3, announced that the Directoire ex6cutif had
just decreed the festival.
35 The Fete was decreed 2 Pluvi6se Year 3: "Loi
portant que la revolution du 9 Thermidor sera
annuellement c6elbree dans toute l'etendue de
la R6publique," Bulletin des lois (An III-
IIIeme trimestre: 1795), no. 114 (Law 602).
Robespierre fell on 9-10 Thermidor Year 2
(July 27-28, 1794).
36 The following description of the festival is
taken from the program in Neufchateau, the
procks-verbal in AN AD VIII-18, and the
account in Le Redacteur (all cited n. 32).
37 "R6publique francaise, Paris, le 8 thermidor,"
GN No. 309, 9 Thermidor Year 6 (July 27,
1798).
38 Lives of the Ancient Greeks and Romans,
"Aemilius Paulus," XXXII-XXXIV.
39 Le Decade philosophique (cited n. 32), p. 302,
claimed that the general public preferred the
parade of exotic animals to everything else in
the festival.
40 Haskell and Penny (cited n. 1), p. 109, state
that virtually every sculpture discussed in their
study ended up in Paris during this period. For
Bonaparte's statement, see: Bonaparte au
Directoire executif, Tolentino, 1 vent6se an 5
(February 19, 1797), in Correspondance de
Napoleon I (cited n. 11), vol. 2, p. 441, no.
1509.
41 Thouin's speech is included in AN ADVIII-18,
pp. 7-10, and Le Redacteur, pp. 1-2 (both
cited n. 14).
42 See: Neufchateau (cited n. 32), vol. 1, pp.
22-28.
43 Ibid., p. 26; and AN ADVIII-18, p. 14 (cited n.
32).
44 See the report cited in n. 14 above.
45 Notice des principaux tableaux recueillis dans
la Lombardie .... Paris, Year 6 (1798); Notice
des principaux tableaux recueillis en Italic ...
de l'Etat de Venise et de Rome .. ., Paris, Year
7 (1798); Notice des principaux tableaux
recueillis en Italie ... de Florence et de Turin
.... Paris, Year 8 (1800); Notice de plusieurs
precieux tableaux, recueillis i Venise, Flor-
ence, Turin et Foligno, Paris, Year 10 (1802);
Notice de plusieurs precieux tableaux, recueil-

lis a Venise, Florence, Naples, Turin et
Bologne, Paris, Year 11 (1803); Notice des
tableaux, dont plusieurs ont eti recueillis i
Parma et i Venise, Paris, Year 13 (1805).
46 Notice ... Lombardie, Year 6 (1798) (cited n.
45).
47 Notice de la Galerie des Antiques du Musee
Napoleon. Notice des statues, bustes et bas-
reliefs, de la galerie des antiques du Musee
Napoleon, ouverte pour la premiere fois le 18
brumaire an 9, Paris, Year 11, p. 4. Gould has
quite accurately titled his study of the Louvre
during this period Trophy of Conquest (cited n.
1).
48 Gazette de France, 18 Brumaire Year 9 (No-
vember 7, 1800), p. 191, and Notice ... Galerie
des antiques (cited n. 47), pp. 119-21.
49 Hautecoeur (cited n. 9), p. 82; the suggestion
came from Cambaceres.
50 Gazette de France, 2 Fructidor Year 11 (Au-
gust 20, 1803), p. 1323.
51 Statues, bustes, bas-reliefs, bronzes, et autres
antiquites, peintures, dessins, et objets cu-
rieux, conquis par la Grande Armee, dans les
annees 1806 et 1807, dont l'exposition a eu lieu
le 14 octobre 1807, premier anniversaire de la
bataille d'lIna, Paris, 1807. The Revolutionary
calendar was abolished in 1805.
52 On Napoleon's bust, see: Saunier (cited n. 1),
p. 40; on museum commissions, see: L. Lanzac
de Laborie, Paris sous Napoleon: Spectacles et
musees, Paris, 1913, p. 237; and Blumer,
"Commission" (cited n. 1), p. 249, n. 1; the
works were never completed.
53 Lanzac de Laborie (cited n. 52), p. 287.
54 See: Milizia, De I'art de voir dans les beaux-
arts; Traduit de l'italien de Milizia suivi des
institutions propres a les faire fleurir en
France et d'un etat des objets d'arts dont ses
musees ont ete enrichis par la guerre de la
liberte. Par le General Pommereul, Paris, Year
6. pp. 314-15; A. H. Taillandier, Documents
biographiques sur P.C.F. Daunou, Paris, 1847,
pp. 133-34. Daunou was commissioner in
Rome to oversee confiscation of libraries. On
removal of the frescoes, see: Marie Louise
Blumer, "La Mission de Denon en Italie
(1811)," Revue des etudes Napoleoniennes
(November-December 1934), pp. 237-57.
55 I am grateful to John Stephens Crawford for
his advice on this monument. See: Massi-
miliano Pavan, "The Horses of San Marco in
the Neo-Classical and Romantic Epochs," in
The Horses of San Marco, Venice, exh. cat.,
The Royal Academy, London, 1977-79, pp.
111-15.
56 Notice des tableaux des ecoles primitives de
l'Italie, de l'Allemagne, et de plusieurs autres
tableaux de differentes ecoles, exposes dans le
Grand Salon du Musie Royal, ouvert le 25
juillet 1814, Paris, 1814. Napoleon abdicated
on April 6, Louis XVIII was installed on June
4, so the show actually opened under the
restored monarchy.
57 Most French accounts insist that the 1814-15
recuperation of the plunder was illegal. See:
Eugene Miintz, "Les Invasions de 1814-1815
et la spoliation de nos mus6es," La Nouvelle
Revue, 115 (April 1897), pp. 703-16; 117
(July-August 1897), pp. 193-207, 420-39;
Saunier (cited n. 1), pp. 85-185; Hautecoeur
(cited n. 9), p. 89. For the fate of the Italian
paintings, see: Marie-Louise Blumer, "Cata-
logue des peintures transport6es d'Italie en
France de 1796 a 1814," Bulletin de la Societe
de l'histoire de l'art francais, 1936, pp. 244-
348; for the Belgian, see: Piot (cited n. 5); for
the Spanish, see: Ilse Hempel Lipschutz, Span-
ish Painting and the French Romantics, Cam-
bridge, MA, 1972.
58 In his first official speech he quickly (and
erroneously) announced that France would
keep the art; see: Le Moniteur universel (cited
n. 10); for a discussion of French attempts to
keep the art, see: Miintz, "Invasions" (cited n.
57); Saunier (cited n. 1), pp. 85-95, 168-76.
59 Saunier (cited n. 1), pp. 168-76; Miintz, "Inva-
sions" (cited n. 57), 117 (July-August 1897),
p. 438.
60 Miintz, "Invasions" (cited n. 57), 117 (July-
August 1897), pp. 204-6.
61 Miintz, "Annexations" (cited n. 1), 10 (1896),
p. 502.
62 Saunier (cited n. 1), pp. 151-52; Jean Chate-
lain, Dominique Vivant Denon et le Louvre de
Napoleon, Paris, 1973, p. 249; Lanzac de
Labordie (cited n.52), pp. 426-28; Miintz, "In-
vasions" (cited n. 57), 117 (July-August
1897), pp. 204, 207.
63 Lavallee (who succeeded Denon in the Louvre)
made a chart of returned art, given in Saunier
(cited n. 1), p. 161; it shows Prussia, 119
paintings, 375 works of sculpture; Austria, 323
paintings, 16 sculptures; Spain, 284 paintings;
Netherlands, 210 paintings, etc. Blumer, "Cat-
alogue" (cited n. 57), pp. 347-48, shows that of
506 paintings seized in Italy, only 249 were
returned. Piot (cited n. 5), pp. 16-63, states
that of 271 pictures taken in Belgium, only 100
were returned.
64 Stendhal, Histoire de la peinture en Italie,
Geneva, 1969, vol. 2, pp. 338-39; only 16 of the
100 Tolentino works were paintings. For a
virtually identical modern defense, see: Saunier
(cited n. 1), p. 135; Miintz, "Invasions" (cited
n. 57), 117 (July-August 1897), p. 193; Haute-
coeur (cited n. 9), p. 89.
65"Lord Liverpool to Lord Castlereagh, Fife
House, August 3, 1815," in Correspondence,
Despatches, and Other Papers of Viscount
Castlereagh, Second Marquess of Londonder-
ry, ed. Charles William Vane, Marquess of
Londonderry, 3rd series, vol. 2, p. 453.
66 For an account of the event and the period, see:
William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles,
London, 1967.
67 Ibid., pp. 202-7, 228; Miintz, "Invasions"
(cited n. 7), 117 (July-August 1897), p. 438;
Haskell and Penny (cited n. 1), p. 116.
68 For another episode in this rivalry, see: E. A.
Wallis Budge, The Rosetta Stone in the British
Museum, NY, 1976.
69"Lord Liverpool to Lord Castlereagh, Fife
House, August 3, 1815," in Castlereagh (cited
n. 65), vol. 2, p. 453.
70 "Memorial of the Foreign Artists at Rome,
addressed to Lord Castlereagh, Rome, 1815,"
inCastlereagh (cited n. 65), vol. 2, pp. 462-63.
71 Neufchateau (cited n. 32), vol. 1, p.29.
Patricia Mainardi is Professor of Art
History at Brooklyn College and The
Graduate Center of the City University
of New York. She received the 1988
Charles Rufus Morey Awardfrom the
College Art Association for her book,
Art and Politics of the Second Empire:
The Universal Expositions of 1855 and
1867.
Summer 1989 163